OCEANSIDE: Fire displaces 62 residents for more than seven hours

Microwave oven may have ignited blaze

OCEANSIDE -- Sixty-two residents at an Oceanside apartment
complex were displaced for more than seven hours Tuesday after an
afternoon fire that gutted one unit and left the entire complex
without gas or electricity, fire officials said.

Forty residents were expected to return Tuesday night to the two
buildings unaffected by the fire. The 22 other residents -- who
lived in the building where the fire took place -- were to be
housed in vacant apartments and a community room at the complex,
Lawrence said.

Firefighters responded a little after 1 p.m. to a blaze in a
two-bedroom unit. Five residents in that second-story apartment
fled after noticing smoke coming from the kitchen, Lawrence
said.

Speaking at the scene, Pablo Estrada, who rents a room in the
apartment, said he put some bread in a microwave and a few minutes
later it caught fire, spreading to the kitchen, dining room and
living room.

That unit was destroyed. No one was injured in the fire.

Ultimately, 40 firefighters battled the blaze to prevent it from
spreading to the building's other three units and the other
buildings in the dense complex, Lawrence said.

The apartment complex was constructed so that utilities to its
three apartment buildings were connected. Firefighters had to shut
down gas and electricity to all of them during the fire, Lawrence
said.

That setup is not used in modern construction, though Lawrence
said he did not know whether it was a building code violation.

A shelter at a local church was located, and would have been
used Tuesday night if gas and electricity had not been restored,
the chief added.

Officials listed an electrical fire behind the microwave as the
cause of the blaze, which caused about $150,000 damage to the
building and $50,000 damage to property.